Conventional receivers often receive signals that are distorted during transmission. For example, an Ethernet transmitter and an Ethernet receiver often communicate over a category-5 (“cat-5”) cable, and the transmitter and receiver are often connected to the cable by transformers. The transformers and the cable itself typically alter the signals transmitted between the transmitter and receiver.
Conventional receivers typically include a mechanism to perform equalization on an incoming signal. The equalization at least partially corrects for the distortion of the incoming signal caused during transmission. A problem with conventional receivers is that the equalization technique used is often sensitive to both process variations and temperature variations. This means that variations in the production of the receivers as well as the operating temperatures of the receivers may affect the equalization of an incoming signal. Also, conventional receivers typically use more complex architectures to perform the equalization. This typically increases the size of the circuits needed to perform the equalization.